CoStar Group, parent company of Homes.com, has opposed Zillow Group’s stated intention to file a motion to dismiss in the lawsuit the two companies are engaged in over who has the right to use thousands of CoStar-watermarked photos.
In legal filings submitted in the past week, Zillow requested a conference on a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, and CoStar filed an opposition letter to Judge Edgardo Ramos in response, calling Zillow’s claims “a dramatic distortion” of CoStar’s initial complaint.
Zillow had said in a request to transfer the case to Washington that the CoStar-copyrighted photos at the center of the case are, in fact, provided to Zillow by their customers, who give them a license to use the photos for listings. But CoStar’s latest retort suggests that Zillow’s methodology for using the photos is the opposite of what they suggest.
Rather, CoStar alleges in its latest opposition letter that Zillow steals CoStar’s photos to build “unclaimed” property pages (ones not associated with a user yet) and then approaches property owners to “claim” their property and buy rental listing ads from Zillow. “After a user ‘claims’ a property and purchases an ad, Zillow provides the same CoStar images for display in a Zillow.com listing,” the response in opposition states.
CoStar’s filing says that Zillow then sends those listings with CoStar-watermarked images to its branded websites and syndication partners Redfin and Realtor.com.
“Zillow’s letter ignores many of these key allegations while rewriting others,” the filing states.
Gene Boxer, CoStar’s general counsel, said in a statement sent to Inman that Zillow’s latest move was to simply divert blame to its customers, including property owners and managers — despite being the target of several lawsuits now from various parties.
“As CoStar Group’s lawsuit spells out, Zillow, not Zillow customers, creates property ‘claim’ pages, using CoStar Group images, to try to lure property owners to buy ads,” Boxer said. “That’s Zillow acting, yet Zillow points the finger of blame at its users. This anti-consumer reflex is part of a pattern. In recent weeks, Zillow has been sued by a class of its customers for fraud in connection with its lead-diversion business model; by Compass for restricting broker and consumer choice; by the FTC for reducing competition and harming consumers by entering into a sham partnership; and by five states for doing the same. Yet Zillow is always ready to play the victim card.”
Zillow declined to comment on CoStar’s filing.
In its argument for a motion to dismiss filed last Tuesday, Zillow claimed that CoStar had not pled Zillow’s alleged infringement was volitional, “a foundational requirement of direct copyright infringement,” nor that Zillow had “practical ability to police the copyright status of images uploaded to its website.”
The opposition letter from CoStar also points out that, even if Zillow’s use of CoStar’s photos were automated, as Zillow has suggested, this circumstance would not free them of liability. CoStar likewise alleged that Zillow had the ability to control the copyright infringement by either preventing or removing the company’s watermarked photos from its portal, but did not.
In July, when it filed a complaint, CoStar alleged that Zillow had displayed nearly 46,000 CoStar-copyrighted images on Zillow Rentals and had displayed them more than 250,000 times on Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com rental listings.
In an update the Homes.com parent company issued last week, it alleged that Zillow had started using even more of CoStar Group-watermarked photos on its website since the lawsuit was first filed — nearly 4,618 more photos, by CoStar’s estimation.
View CoStar’s latest filing below:
Update: Zillow declined to comment on CoStar’s new filing after this story was published.
